


The Innocence that Died

by Steadfxst



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steadfxst/pseuds/Steadfxst
Summary: Based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Lenore."Michael has come to grieve the loss of his love, and all the townspeople, who never gave a damn about her when she lived, have come to gawk at him.





	The Innocence that Died

**Author's Note:**

> This idea would just _not_ leave me alone...

It’s raining.

 _Of course it’s raining_ , Michael thinks.

Around him, everyone is weeping, holding black, lacy handkerchiefs to their wet eyes. How convenient the rain must be for those who cannot manage to make their own tears! They cover their mouths to hide their forced sobs. Rage blooms in his chest; Michael can’t look at them.

He closes his eyes to the grey afternoon. Behind his eyelids, he cannot see the bare tree branches nor the heavy white clouds. He doesn’t have to see the dreary dove grey parasols the ladies carry, nor the sedate black ones the man hold over their wives and children. With his eyes closed, none of them are there, and for a moment, that is enough.

The sound of horses’ hooves force him to open his eyes again, and bright spots of light dance in his line of sight.

_Had they been that tightly closed?_

The horse and carriage draws nearer, and the wailing starts anew. It’s enough to make his skin crawl, but he doesn’t say a word as the coffin carrying ’Lenore rolls past his face.

It is then that Shawn approaches him.

“What a pity,” he says.

Michael doesn’t reply. He merely watches the driver rein in the horses and climb down off his seat. Shawn doesn’t stay silent for long. 

“There’s not a dry eye here,” Shawn says. “Except for yours.”

Still Michael ignores him. To an outsider, he might appear calm, but an unspeakable anger bubbles ever-closer to the surface the more Shawn presses him.

“Nothing left to do but sing the hymns and read the rites, I suppose. She was so beautiful. What a pity.”

Without losing a beat, Michael turns with all his might and punches Shawn in the face, knocking the man to the muddy ground. Shawn looks up, holding his cheek in shock. The scuffle prompts some mourners to turn and gape. The gravediggers cease digging.

 _Good_ , Michael thinks. _Now I have their attention._

“What demon has gotten hold of you, Michael?” Shawn says, indignant.

He staggers to his feet, suit caked in mud, and shoves Michael’s shoulders, but he barely budges, barely registers the act.

“Hypocrites!” he shouts. “You didn’t care about Eleanor when she was here, so why do you weep now that she’s gone? Have you come here to gawk? To point and laugh at me?”

A woman in a freshly-dyed black bonnet rushes forward. Some of the dye has begun to seep in the rain, leaving rivulets of black to run down her neck.

“Michael, I know you’re grieving, but you’re making a scene,” Victoria reprimands.

“None of you,” Michael continues, unhindered, “None of you helped her when she needed it. When her parents abandoned her. When she took shameful work to support herself, forcing her into destitution. None of you helped when you saw the stagecoach headed right towards her!”

They won’t look him in the eyes. They are _cowards_.

“That’s what I mean,” Michael says to all the down-turned faces. “You want to sing a funeral song to her now that she’s not your problem anymore. She was so young.”

His voice breaks on “young.” His fists unclench.

He can’t help it. Had he known what ’Lenore’s life had become once he had left town to go back East, he would’ve come returned to her. But she never said a word to him; she barely wrote. And neither did they. Not until the gossip spread when he returned for her funeral.

Tentatively, Shawn approaches him.

“I’m sorry, Michael,” he says. “We all are.”

A few of the mourners nod. The diggers resume digging now that the spectacle was apparently over.

“You’ve gone mad with grief; that’s all. You don’t know what you’re saying,” Victoria soothes.

“We all know how you felt about her,” Shawn says.

To this day, Michael wore the engagement ring she had thrice rejected from him around his neck on a chain. She had always said it was never the right time. That she was too young to be married, that he was would grow tired of her, that she would make a terrible wife and drive him crazy.

_She was wrong about that. How could he grow tired of her? She who bloomed with mirth and vitality, and would continue to do so, for eternity…_

Shawn was still talking when Michael comes out of his brief reverie. 

“…It seemed as though she’d rise up from her casket. Her hair looked like it glowed upon her pillow. But her eyes…” 

Michael raises up a hand, and Shawn stops reflexively. Victoria and he share a worried look. Would he strike again? 

“Eleanor is not dead,” Michael tells them. 

They blink. 

 _They think I’ve gone mad…_  

“For she is in the Good Place now.” 

The diggers put down their shovels, and the pall bearers in white gloves step forward to lower her coffin into the wet earth. Michael tears his eyes away from the scene, determined to go on despite the breaking of his heart. 

“I sing no dirge today. My heart is light.”

With that, he turns on his heel, leaving Shawn and Victoria to gape after him. 

_Let them._

Michael walks down the cemetery’s main path and out the gates without looking back.

He stands tall until he gets back to his private carriage. He tells his driver to take him home.

Only then, alone, truly, in all the world, does Michael weep for his dear and sweet ’Lenore.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been meaning to write this for a while, and I finally sat down and wrote it.
> 
> Poem ("Lenore"): http://www.online-literature.com/poe/574/
> 
> Analysis & Meanings behind "Lenore": https://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides4/Lenore.html


End file.
